Antoni Martí Monterde (Torís, 1968) is a writer and he teaches Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of Barcelona. He spent his childhood in Valencia where he discovered literature, especially poetry, the main influence being J. V. Foix. In 1993 he worked as coordinator of an ambitious collective project, a volume in homage to the Valencian writer Joan Fuster. This was another landmark and since then he has studied Fuster’s writing as a departure point in Comparative Literature, a task he has alternated with his own creative work in poetry, fiction and the essay.

After an initial volume of poetry Sobre el desordre (On Disorder, 1992), he received the 1994 Guerau de Liost Prize for Els Vianants (Wayfarers, 1995). At about this time, he began to write a diary which led him off on another track to a work called L’erosió (Erosion, 2001). Published by Edicions 62, this is a mature work, a diary that is also a travel book but it can be read as a novel as well. It is a vision of Buenos Aires, but also of Barcelona, from a distance. L’erosió delves into the genre in its traditional form while also breaking new ground and capturing diversity in an intense meditation on the structure of the open work that ends up being wholly a diary.

He has also published the essay J. V. Foix o la solitud de l’escriptura (J. V. Foix or the Solitude of the Act of Writing, Edicions 62, 1998), which was awarded the Joaquím Xirau Prize. He has written numerous articles and studies for magazines and other publications, for example the AELC review Literatures (Literatures), often dealing with the relations between criticism, fiction and autobiography. After living for seven years in Barcelona, he presently resides in the city of Girona. In 2002, his book Erosió was awarded the Valencian Writers Critics Prize.

He is a member of AELC (Association of Catalan Language Writers).


Web page: Xulio Ricardo Trigo for AELC.
Translation: Julie Wark.
Photographs: Personal file of the author.